


Catch That Blazing Star (That Rainbow)

by luninosity



Series: McFassy Regency AU [4]
Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fake Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Napoleonic Wars, Regency Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 08:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17056448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: James doesn’t make a choice. Between his life and Michael’s, there’s no choice at all. Never has been, never will be.





	Catch That Blazing Star (That Rainbow)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LifeLover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LifeLover/gifts).



> OH MY GOD okay so five years later...
> 
> I don't know if anyone's still reading this series, but if you are, THANK YOU. This is...probably...my last fic for this pairing; never say never, and there might be one or two short things sometime, but at this point I'm not really actively writing much for them. But I'd had this story and this plot in my head for literally _years,_ and so I wanted to finish off this series - that was one of my goals for this year - and it's fitting, in a way, to end with a series that began as so much a part of this fandom community, with prompt challenges and gifts.
> 
> I love you guys.
> 
> Oh, and the title for this one is from the Smashing Pumpkins' "Knights of Malta," this time. <3

James doesn’t make a choice. Between his life and Michael’s, there’s no choice at all. Never has been, never will be.

The instant he fires he sees the flicker from the second shooter’s pistol. He’d known or guessed or felt in his gut that there’d be two. Reinforcements. Strategy. Determination to lurk in the crowd of the opera hall and wait for Lord Fassbender, who as everyone knew would be waiting to escort his brilliant pianist husband, favorite of the Prince Regent and consequently England’s current darling, safely to a carriage after a thoroughgoing crush of a performance.

Everyone _had_ known. Including Napoleon’s agents in England, who—according to the information James’d received via breathless panicked courier five minutes ago backstage—had chosen tonight to take out one of England’s greatest assets, in terms of the Fassbender estate’s wealth and manufacturing works and support for the war effort and the Crown.

The first agent had made the motion too obvious, stirring in the wings as the crowd rose and surged and began to find reticules and wraps, amid rustlings of silk and taffeta. James, straightening from a last bow, turning that way, hadn’t even seen the weapon fully. Training and certainty took over; and he’d known, he _knew_ , he knew the angle and the target. He’d acted.

He does carry a pistol. Has for months, now. Since recruitment by the Home Office: as a charismatic popular figure who might headline war donation musical evenings and balls; as a secret agent who can encode and write messages to fellow composers and musicians in France, under the guise of blithe and lofty artistic expression and correspondence, taking no notice of mundane events such as battles. He’d been promised he wouldn’t need to leave home, to leave Michael; he’d promised Michael he’d never have to leave.

That thought flies through his head the same way the bullet sears the air. It burns. It scorches. The impact’s dull and thudding and almost doesn’t register.

He’s a better shot than Michael—better than many other agents, though not the absolute top at the Office—and he’s at his best when it’s instinctive, a whip-round and a trigger-squeeze and a crack—

That’s both French operatives down, one fatally and one likely not, framed by red velvet and white marble and the gasps and shrieks of the shocked London elite—

That’s Michael safe—

That’s Michael screaming his name and running, and James tries to talk but it’s oddly difficult, and suddenly he’s on his knees, on the floor, behind the piano-bench—the floor’s polished and hard, and he can’t seem to inhale—

He’s flung his own pistol out of sight, under a curtain—nobody’ll have the story straight, he’d fired low and fast and no one expects Lord Fassbender’s artistic once-impoverished Scottish sensation of a husband to be a crack shot or a spy, so as the rumor runs wild he’ll be seen as a victim, a different way to hurt Michael—which is true, albeit in a way that’ll leave his identity intact—

He can’t think well. His vision’s hazy. He’s only upright on his knees because he’s sort of sagged into place there and can’t make any part of himself move.

He coughs. Hot. Wet.

He touches his chest. His hand comes away scarlet.

Michael’s shoving bodies out of the way and lunging up onto the stage and falling down at his side, cravat askew and coat torn, face ashen. “James—James, no, oh God no, no—”

James feels Michael’s hands on him, Michael shaking him, but that only accomplishes more dizziness, more blurring of vision. He’s falling more, or not entirely falling because Michael’s caught him, and that’s good. Sitting up isn’t possible, apparently, and Michael’s solid and firm and nice to lie against.

Michael’s also crying. Drops spill from his eyes, down his cheeks, to his chin; one or two hit James himself. They’re warm. Hot. Like blood.

“James,” Michael chokes out, “James, no—no, please, please stay with me—you can, you can do that, you’ll make it, just hold on—”

Other bodies have arrived. The theatre director, wringing hands and pleading that they’d had security, of course they had, for the famous composer and musician James McAvoy, Lord Fassbender’s husband…Michael’s friends Viscounts Stewart and McKellen…a recognizable face, that political courier from earlier, who slips away and then back, unless that’s James himself slipping…in and out…

“I love you.” Michael’s voice breaks, cracks, collapses. “James. Can you hear me? I love you. Please don’t—please don’t go, please don’t leave me—you promised you wouldn’t, you promised me, you said you’d always come home to me—”

Michael knows what he does. Michael’s always known. Since that dinner-party evening, fateful and awful and wonderful at once: a night when James had been worn thin and cold and sick inside, wondering whether they’d ever make this arranged marriage work, wondering what to do when his husband seemed to expect him to learn the rules of London Society overnight, wondering whether Michael could ever love him, or if not love at least affection…

The Duke of Wellington had been playing recruiter, then. And James had needed a purpose. Beyond simply being ornamental. Something he could _do_. Some good.

And Michael’d been so shaken, when they’d met to talk in the music room; Michael’d knelt and begged for forgiveness, had begged James not to leave him, had let words of love tumble unprompted from those lips, understanding every silent injury and moment of taking James for granted, pleading to be allowed to try again.

Michael’s pleading now. Begging. Bargaining. Anything, everything. All his wealth, all his time, whatever God or the universe or James himself might want in trade. Promises range from giving the entire country estate over to the Home Office as a base, in exchange for James retiring, to learning to bake cinnamon scones himself, personally, down in the kitchens, because James likes cinnamon scones. Please, Michael’s crying. Please.

Someone else is present. Young, brisk, professional in a medical way; a physician, then. Vaguely familiar. One of the Home Office? Wellington’s quiet competent pet surgeon, the one who also speaks Gaelic and Catalan and Spanish and French and Greek?

James is too tired to come up with the man’s name, and in any case Michael takes priority. He can’t make himself find any sort of grip on Michael’s hand—his own arm feels too boulder-like to stir, thick and weighted down—but he can meet Michael’s eyes, can hold that brimming-over grey-green with his own, and can keep holding on, steady.

Michael needs him to be steady. Michael needs him to be a rock. Michael’s always needed him, ever since they were boys playing in the woods and diving into lakes; more recently, taking over the domestic management and the coordination of the staff, while Michael explored investments. Even when James hadn’t been sure Michael loved him, he’d known Michael wanted him around to talk to, if nothing else.

He can’t talk now. He tries: _I love you, I kept you safe, you’re safe, so it’s all right. Everything’s all right because you’re safe._ His lips move. He hopes Michael’s understood.

“You did,” Michael shudders out between sobs, “you did, you did, you saved me—James, God, oh God, how can I—I can’t lose you, I can’t—someone _do_ _something_ —James, hold on, just hold on for me—I’ve only just found you, I haven’t told you enough, I haven’t told you how much I love you, so please, please stay with me, I can say it more, I’ll say it more, a hundred times a day, a thousand—”

James attempts a smile. Everything hurts and doesn’t, in a distant far-off kind of way. He knows he’s bleeding and it’s bad. He doesn’t feel precisely present, drifting, floating away. If he thinks about it more the pain sharpens, so he’s trying not to. The unanchored heavy feeling’s growing, though: like sinking, slow and serene, water closing around him dark and blue.

Michael’s saying more words but he can’t hear well. New pressure’s happening around his chest. It abruptly hurts a lot more.

He keeps his eyes fixed on Michael’s. He holds onto that hue, that emotion, that love. Michael’s alive and here and safe. That’s good. That’s right.

Someone announces, “I think if we attempt—” and pain bursts in star-flares through him and then subsides, low and ebbing as a tide, drained and quiet; James slides away into the quiet too, closing his eyes without noticing, only seeing Michael.

 

When he opens his eyes, he sees Michael.

For a moment he’s certain he’s dead. He’s died thinking of Michael; that’s logical.

But the pain explodes like firecrackers and he’s gasping for air and dizzy with hot and cold and shock, and the world’s disoriented and tilted, and he’d scream but he can’t breathe, but everything hurts so much it must be real—

It’s real. Michael’s there. Beside him, hands on him, holding him gently but firmly down. Michael’s saying, “James, James, thank God, oh thank God, thank you, I love you—” and keeping him in place; Michael’s eyes are bruised from lack of sleep, face hollow and stubbled and graven with lines, and James desperately needs to know what happened and how to make it okay.

“Don’t sit up—don’t move—can you even hear me? God—” Michael turns, pleads hopelessly with someone, “I thought the fever had—”

James makes a sound. It’s an undignified sound, more of a croak.

“The fever _has_ broken.” That physician again, neat and slim, coming to stand by his bedside, which James has now figured out _is_ his bedside, his and Michael’s. Their London home. “He’s awake. He’s looking at you, my lord.”

“James—” Michael’s eyes land on his. Michael’s face is taut: too many emotions.

James scrapes up the strength for a nod. He can’t move anywhere else, and he’s exhausted and hurting more than he ever thought possible, but he’s here and hearing Michael.

He’s not going anywhere. They’re not going anywhere.

Michael clutches his hands, breathes, “I love you,” and folds down over him, crumples over him, into a huddle of relief and tears and broken heart-pieces finding others to cling to. “James, James, I love you.”

James makes one more small sound, which Michael appears to regard as the most heroic act ever performed; water’s allowed, evidently, and laudanum, which normally he dislikes but just now is the most welcome medicine in the universe.

The drugs make him sleepy. But it’s not a bad kind of sleepy. Warm, instead, with Michael’s hands enfolding his.

 

He wakes again a day or so later, more clearheaded. Michael’s asleep in a chair beside him but jerks upright the second James stirs. “Oh—”

“Michael,” James says weakly. His voice creaks and wobbles from disuse, but it’s recognizable. His chest hurts and is wrapped in white. He registers these sensations, but Michael matters most. “You should sleep. You need to. I love you.”

“ _Me_ ,” Michael says, “how can you even—only you would—oh, Christ, James, I love you,” and comes to sit beside him, offering laudanum, offering water, offering weak cold tea. “James.”

“Still here,” James breathes. He’s not sure how, but he is. And their bed, with those sapphire silk hangings, the ones Michael’d specially ordered to match his eyes, concurs.

He accepts a quarter-dose of laudanum and discovers that he can’t sit up on his own, though with the aid of Michael and some pillows he can at least be tilted that way. He can glimpse the bookshelves, the paintings, a hint of the London street through partly opened windows; it feels and smells and murmurs like life, made real again in carriage-rumbles and book-spines and the scent of tea.

Michael notices him looking at the window. “I wasn’t sure—I know conventional wisdom says to keep sickrooms shut—but Wellington’s doctor said some fresh air, not too much, would help air out the room—he seems to know what he’s doing.” And then, looking back at James, “He saved you. I’ll give him anything he wants. I’ll make him the richest man in England if he asks for that.”

James, who is fairly sure that anyone who works as Arthur Wellesley’s pet physician has little need for extra income, lets this go. They can talk about it later. Michael doesn’t, in fact, quite know the extent of the funds James has access to, both personal and professional. Even James barely knows, because he’s still getting used to having money of his own, and certainly not _that_ much of it.

Instead he glances down at himself, bandages and chest-wrappings and all. Michael understands instantly, and sighs. “It’s…you’re healing. But it was…bad. We didn’t think—they told me to prepare for—it’ll be a long time before you’re out of bed.”

James waits; Michael takes his hand, begins toying with his fingers: restless and needing comfort. “It was clean, at least, he said, all the way through. It’ll heal. You’ll heal.” And, with an abrupt squeeze of comprehension, “You’ll be able to play again. Not soon—no exertion, no moving about—but you should be able to sit at a piano.”

James nods, as that last shard of his world finds a home: he’ll have music, and he has Michael. Everything else is less than essential. Those, though—

Those are his life.

“I should’ve told you that sooner.” Recrimination washes through Michael’s gaze. “I apologize. I didn’t think—but of course you’d want to know. The way you play, the way you love your art—I’m sorry.”

“No,” James whispers. “Don’t be sorry. You’re here.”

“So are you.”

“I nearly lost you.”

“I thought,” Michael gets out, shaky, “it was rather the other way around.”

“He aimed for you.”

“And you shot him. My hero. My husband. My James.” Michael exhales. “Did you know? About the other agent.”

James doesn’t lie to his husband, and won’t begin now. He leans back against pillows, holds Michael’s hand, nods. “I was only certain just then. Not before. But they normally work with backup.”

“So you thought it might be a possibility.”

“I knew what I was doing.” He has to stop for air. “I was saving you.”

“Christ.” Michael swipes his free hand over both eyes. “James…”

“You’d’ve done it for me.”

“I would, but—”

“And I,” James finishes, as loftily as he can while prone in their bed and tipsy on laudanum, “have Home Office training and a secret military commission. My job is literally to protect you. And also I love you.”

“Oh.” Michael’s expression wavers: that hint of anger, of frustration that James had known and said nothing, dwindles under fondness and wry sad awareness that even _without_ training he’d’ve done the same and above all love. “Guess I shouldn’t try to argue with you, in that case…”

“You really shouldn’t,” James agrees. “I’m tired but I’d rather not sleep again yet. Would you read to me? Anything you choose.”

“There’s a new Austen novel.” Michael leans down, brushes a strand of hair back from James’s face. “I’ll ring for someone to get it. The copy I’d already bought, that is, and been planning to give you as a present.”

“You love me,” James says faintly but happily. They’re going to be well, then, both of them. He knows they are.

This life is complicated, and will be complicated. But Michael doesn’t ask him to leave his work, and James doesn’t ask that Michael not worry; they’ve been down the road of silence and lack of explanations and lack of fulfillment and misunderstanding each other’s needs. They’ve been honest; they are honest. They know each other, these days.

Which is why, even as Michael affirms, “I do,” James is adding, “I’ll be recuperating for quite some time, I imagine?”

Michael nods once more. The weight of how long, of how near they’d come to irrevocable dark, lies anguished but healing in his eyes, in his shoulders, in his fingers twining themselves over and over through James’s. “And I’ll see to it that you do. I’m keeping you in bed exactly as long as your physician prescribes. Even once you start trying to convince me to let you up. Stubborn Scottish pixie that you are.”

“You married me. What I meant, though…” He can’t wiggle closer to Michael, but he can tighten his grip on that hand, so he does. “I’m not above taking my time. You know. Ensuring I’m fully, properly, thoroughly recovered. Taking things _extremely_ slow.”

“Oh,” Michael says.

“Possibly even out in the country,” James says. “Where we grew up. Your family’s Scottish estate. I think I’d recover well up there.” It’d bordered his own father’s smaller and poorer landholdings; their fathers had been friends at school and after, despite the disparity. The marriage of sons had been arranged.

James and Michael have made that marriage true. James, lying here in bed with Michael beside him, knows it is.

“Yes,” Michael says. “I think you—you would. Yes.”

“And someday…maybe even someday soon…” He doesn’t finish that sentence, only offers a little eyebrow-shrug. They’ve had that conversation as well. When the war’s over. When the Home Office no longer needs an agent with James’s particular skills. When they can travel for pure delight, and James can play pianos both new and antique in Italy and France and Prussia, wandering squares and streets with Michael’s hand in his.

“Someday,” he finishes. It’s a concrete promise, not a dream. A future, etched in music-notes and drenched in sunshine. And he’ll be there to see it. So will Michael. “Until then I’ll keep you safe. And you’ll read to me whenever I ask.”

“Of course.” Michael bends to kiss him: tall and grave and tender and loyal as an old-fashioned oath, a knight to a liege lord, even though Michael’s the one with the title and the lands. A promise, in turn. Sealed with the brush of those lips. “Of course I will.”


End file.
